


An Immorality Play

by TychoBrandt



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, California, Cars, Drugs, Fake AH Crew, Forensics, Guns, If things hadn't turned out so well, Los Angeles, Morality, Mortality, Organized Crime, Picaresque, Police Procedural
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-05 17:42:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4189017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TychoBrandt/pseuds/TychoBrandt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are not a good person, and you never were. Society made that decision for you. Ah, but some just have a tendency to be born that way.</p><p>If you must, call it the City of Angels. But only few were ever brave enough to lift their eyes to the hole in the sky from which those angels fell.</p><p>They gathered the bones and feathers from the dust and formed their own wings. And so shall they rule, or die trying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. West of Eden

_No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow._  
Euripides

 _Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying._  
Jean Cocteau

 _I intend to live forever, or die trying._  
Groucho Marx

\---

Jack does not like the fabled ‘new car smell.’ That false odor of automation and artifice.

But the smell of salt and iron on the leather seats of his 1965 hardtop midnight blue Pontiac Catalina? He liked that even less. Air conditioning wouldn’t exactly help. Normally he would crack a window, feel the breeze in his beard, but…

“Michael?” he calls back over his shoulder tentatively. Jack can’t see him in the rear-view mirror.

“Fuck,” comes the grated, gurgling reply, followed by a ribcage-rattling cough. Good. Still got some fight in him.

He’s run five—no, make that _six_ red lights, traveled as much sidewalk as asphalt, and nearly sideswiped a minivan full of soccer kids and orange slices. Dismembered every traffic law known. He’s usually better than this, especially behind one of his custom twinchargers. He doesn’t like switching plates. Miles will probably bitch at him for dicking up the shocks, too.

The parcel Michael brought with him bumps along in the trunk. Jack tries not to think about it.

Jack flexes his fingers within his driving gloves, gripping the blood-slick steering wheel, struggling to keep his breathing measured. Out of habit, he reaches for the radio, but stops himself. Stuck behind a school bus at a four-way stoplight, he glances back at the man sprawled across his back seats.

Intestines writhe like pink and purple-scaled vipers within a nest of shredded abdominal muscle, vying for freedom from underneath Michael’s bloodied, trembling hands. Curved fragments of white poke out from red labyrinth of entrails. With every wet shuddering breath comes a new rush of blood and bile. With every wracking cough, a spray. With every movement, his organs try to slither away—but he holds them tight with four packs of combat gauze, a roll of medical tape and a fistful of granulated coagulant.

 _“Where the fuck do I go?”_ Jack had screamed into his headset as Michael collapsed into his car, convulsing and vomiting to each heartbeat. His expression was… vacant. Jack had never seen eyes like that before. Not in a living person. With three seatbelts, Jack bound Michael down, careful not to touch the exposed innards (but would accidently touch them anyway, wincing all the while). Michael thrashed like a trapped animal the entire time, kicking Jack in the chest and face. Gritting his teeth, Jack stabbed an autoinjector full of oxycodone into Michael’s lower chest, just as Kerry had shown him. Damn it, where _was_ Kerry, anyway? Of all the times—

 _“I’ll send you the address.”_ With uncharacteristic calmness, Geoff’s voice ebbed over the line as though they were shooting the shit about college football. _“No hospitals.”_ He hung up before Jack could demand an explanation. 

Two point-blank hot magnum loads of triple-aught buckshot would have been the double exclamation point to punctuate most men’s lives. But Michael was not most men. Though, from the way he was growling and gnashing his teeth in the back, it almost sounded like he wished he was. Those lead-and-antimony shotpellets were rolling through him like his hollowed torso was a pinball machine; with every hard turn, Michael snarled. With every sudden stop, he hissed. Jack felt like he was doing remote surgery with a Goddamn automobile. But he needed to keep him conscious. Michael’s life had been freeflowing for fifteen minutes already. 

“Michael.”

Nothing.

“Michael!”

“What?” he rasps. Jack wonders how he can even speak.

“Hey, sing me the alphabet backwards without any vowels in G minor.”

“E… is for… _eat… shit_.”

“Okay, I’ll accept that one for creativity. Name five different marsupials that can fit inside a microwave.” 

Dry silence. Then: “I’ll… strangle you… with _my fucking guts_.”

Jack could believe it. The nine millimeter Beretta in the center console, and the other tucked beneath his seat, and the other one in the glovebox were little comfort. “Almost there.”

Despite his assured tone, Jack has no idea where ‘there’ was. Glendale? What the fuck was in Glendale? Geoff had only texted him a residential address and _“don’t ask questions, do whatever she says._ ” 

Thirty minutes. It had been thirty minutes since Michael had walked into completely routine exchange with a client in an underground parking complex downtown and emerged with his blood-drenched machete in one hand and a severed, white-dusted head in the other. A few pedestrians stopped to gape at the scene. 

“Busta tried to play me,” was all he had said, unceremoniously flinging the grimacing head into the trunk of the car. Standard procedure. Jack sighed. He still wasn’t entirely sure what kind of bizarro _Most Dangerous Game_ type shit Michael did with the trophies he collected, and really, he didn’t _want_ to know. Other enterprises hired street samurai or road ronin do this kind of thing. But Geoff insisted on the personal, intimate touch.

That was when Jack looked back at Michael opening the door, and realized that he was practically looking through him. Michael’s jeans were dyed a deep carmine, his Air Force Ones stained scarlet. Were it not for the armored vest, Jack could’ve sworn Michael would’ve been connected to his hips only by his spine.

Glendale? What the _fuck_ was in Glendale?

The GPS application in Jack’s cellphone chirps a few times once they roll into their destination. Suburban neighborhood, far from the freeway, obsessively-kept yards cordoned by blooming rose hedges and frequented more by underpaid immigrant gardeners than by those who owned them. Each of these houses would easily crack a mil, if not a mil-and-a-half. Were he younger, Jack would be tempted to bookmark this hood for a casing spree, but… now’s not the time.

He squints at the house. Red terracotta-tiled roof, white stucco walls, black wrought iron, three Goddamn stories tall, all styled after the Spanish Colonial. It looks like the others, but… dread settles into Jack’s stomach. 

Jack gets out, looks up and down the street (coast is clear), opens Michael’s door, undoes the seatbelts, and begins pulling him out. “Come on. We’re here.”

Michael is silent, moving like an automaton.

“Michael?”

“Lindsay,” he utters distantly, eyes glossy and blank.

Shit. “Come on, come on.” Michael’s hands cling to the hole in his center as Jack half-carries, half-drags him to the door. He’s lighter than usual. The thought makes Jack sick.

He rings the doorbell. Again. And again. And pounds on the door. Was this the right address? What if—

The door opens. Before Jack can speak, someone takes Michael, and closes the door without a word. Jack stands there, blinking.

A fountain bubbles somewhere behind him.

_Don’t ask questions._

Jack sits in the car for four hours, watching the sun go down and illuminate the pollution of Los Angeles in neon-Photoshopped oranges and purples, cut through with the lights of airplanes and helicopters. Its ninety Goddamn degrees out, but cold sweat beads along his forehead, under his arms.

He reaches under the seat a few times for the lukewarm bottle of Marillenschnaps he keeps between the pistol and the vacuum-sealed pack of dextroamphetamines, but loses interest halfway through. His fingertips ghost over the texture of the radio dial, but he doesn’t bother. The news would ‘report’ masturbatory celebrity nonsense and the occasional sensationalized murder, and the only music that would be on is the usual top forty garbage—middle class kids fronting about being hard and gangsta, or middle class kids whining about being misunderstood. The police scanner, too, has little to offer aside from street-apocrypha hobos being cuffed for having no license to preach.

So he waits. The thing he is undeniably the best at, yet despises the most.

Jack, the AH wheelman, waits.

And waits. 

And—

Before he realizes it, his passenger door is opening and Michael is sitting next to him.

Jack stares at him incredulously. “What happened?”

Michael stares straight ahead, working his jaw. “I’m not sure,” he says tonelessly. Like he’s talking in his sleep. His skin is pallid, but not from blood loss.

Jack looks down expecting to find the wound, and… aside from the gunpowder-singed shirt, Michael is _reconstructed_. His abdomen is unbroken, bound together by a Mayan calendar of black, lustrous hair-thin stitches. No blood. No pus. No swelling. No bandaging. That’s… that’s not possible, how—

_Don’t ask questions._

Jack brings the Catalina to life and began the drive home. Michael leans his forehead against his window.

Geoff had some fucking answering to do.


	2. West Wind

_The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals._  
Martin Luther King, Jr. 

_The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught._  
H. L. Mencken

 _The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason._  
David Hume

\---

It's a shitty bar, generally visited upon by shitty people. Grew like a bruise-colored dandelion out of the cracks in the concrete sidewalk of Skid Row, though you wouldn’t expect it. The relatively nicer corner of Skid Row. Popcorn machine that unfailingly delivers a mysteriously stale taste, pinball machine with too many balls, and three arcade cabinets, all originals, yet only two of them working: Metal Slug X and Tekken Tag Tournament. The third, Time Crisis 4, is missing one of its plastic controller-guns.

Funny story: some dumbass on probation goes to Wal-Mart (why not Home Depot?) and buys gloves, boltcutters, and spraypaint. You've heard this one? Okay, well, it's funnier the second time. So said dumbass goes to the bar, puts on the gloves, uses the cutters to snip the cord of the Time Crisis gun, goes outside, sprays it black, and then tries to hold up the 7-11 down the street.

The cashier hole-punched him through the head and throat with a .45, and was granted an honorary NRA membership. They revoked it upon realizing that he had immigrated there a decade ago and didn’t identify as Christian, but still. He was the face of every gun magazine that April.

Funny, right? No? Alright.

Wait, this guy, he was on probation for trying to rob a gun store. Still not funny? Alright, alright.

You might be thinking, “Well, shit, why didn’t the bartender do anything about the Time Crisis gun?” Because bartenders are human too, and he was taking a piss. A rather long one. Having a bladder isn’t aiding or abetting. 

But this bartender, Bill, he’s a good guy. Served his country, did CPR for a taxi driver once (he lived), learned how to keep smiling after the first wife left him and the second one was stolen away by cancer. Not quite fatherly, not quite uncle-y, not quite grandfatherly. Somewhere in between. The kind of guy you’d pull a Twelve Angry Men for.

He’s run this bar for a while, seen some strange characters. But there are these three that go beyond strange, into odd. Or beyond odd, into strange. 

He knows them by name, now. Geoff and Griffon Ramsey—married, and not just for the alliteration—and Gavin, a close friend of theirs. The married couple are painted with (even to Bill’s practical eye) beautiful tattoos and exude a kind of post-punk, post-grunge aura, while Gavin… well, Bill can’t quite get a lock on English expat. But he’s something.

The three come in at least three times a week. Geoff always orders the most expensive whiskey (single malt) behind the counter, locked in a glass case. Griffon is a bit more adventurous, going for sake or rum or tequila depending on the day of the week. Gavin… Gavin requests, in his amusing accent, a different thing every day, most of the time reading cocktail recipes off of his smartphone. Mostly the ones with funny names. Like “The Grade 4 Hemorrhoid.” Red, purple, and Gavin didn’t order it again. In the Gavin Free Alcoholic Beverage Rating Metric (GFABRM), it filed under “foul.” Of course, the only two ratings are “top” and “foul” anyway. 

They sit around, sometimes for half an hour, sometimes for three hours. They talk about video games and underrated movies and the cost of movie tickets and power tools and interior design and dogs and pornography and dendrology and argue over completely random trivia. They balance overfilled drinks on their heads and throw limes at each other and generally have a gay old time. When they aren’t looking, Bill indulges in a rare, uncynical smile.

But something about them… just isn’t right. Bill can’t quite place it. But his instincts have never failed him before. 

“Geoff…”

Geoff looks at Gavin over the rim of his glass, eyebrow arched. “Yeah?”

“Would you rather—”

Bill rolls his remaining good eye. Here they go again.

“So let’s say that—”

“Hypothetically?” 

“Hypothetically, of course, you get a million quid whenever you orgasm, but…”

Griffon leans her elbows on the table, swirling her mead. “Go on.”

“You ejaculate through your tear ducts.”

And then Griffon nearly irrigates Gavin in fermented honey. She holds a hand to her mouth, shoulders shaking, but Geoff leans back, and looks pensive. “Jizz tears, huh.” 

“Jizz tears,” muses Griffon.

“Jizzy, gammy, potentially smeggy tears,” confirms Gavin.

Geoff runs a finger along the rim of his glass, pursing his lips. Not that you could tell, from his moustache being in the way. “From actual sex, and jacking off?”

“Right, having a wank counts. And it pulses out—” Gavin gestures obscenely with his hands—“Wot I mean is, like the actual ejaculative—well, ejaculatory process, yeah? So it’s like, three or four spurts.”

“I’m more of a fiver myself.”

“Rubbish,” Gav scoffs. 

Griffon cocks her head to the side. “Don’t round up. It’s not impressive.”

“Hey, I think I can count my own… processes.” Geoff frowns. “But my tear ducts are attached to my nasal cavity, so does that mean if I sneeze—”

They continue to bicker amongst themselves. Bill shakes his head and cleans another glass. Weirdos. 

As they leave, Geoff tosses a handful of dead president on the bar counter. He never was one for that ‘tab’ nonsense. “Thanks, Bill.”

Bill nods, and watches them walk out the door.

 ---

Somewhere in the Mojave Desert, somewhere in Joshua Tree, if you look between the heat waves and the dust, you’ll find a nice, pleasant house sown amongst the stones and sand. It was unique enough to be considered artistic and original, yet not unique enough to be denounced as ‘hipster’ by some dumb cunt on the Internet. 

And, inside, two grown ass men are sitting around, being thoroughly bored. They are surrounded with perhaps three or four million dollars of professional-level recording equipment. And a lot of really cool wood sculptures, and even a few windchimes.

There’s also a gagged man, bruised and sweating, chained to a pole inside. But we’ll get to that later.

So, the two men; they sit opposite each other on intricately carved wooden stools, browsing their cell phones. A table is set between them, strewn with firearm cleaning gear.

The one in the cowboy hat is twirling a Single Action Army in one hand, and swiping the screen of his phone with the other. He hums, nods, and makes soft sounds of general affirmation, crossing and re-crossing his cowboy-booted ankles on the table.

And every time he does, the other man—a hairy Neanderthal of a man, with the gentrifying touch of glasses—glances at him irritably. Who knows what he’s looking at. Porn, probably. Porn on a cell phone. What a joke.

“This one’s really good. _‘No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.’_ That’s deep, man. Like… deep like a river. Know who said that one?”

“I really don’t fucking care.”

The cowboy stops twirling his revolver, and pushes up the brim of his hat with the muzzle. “Heraclitus.”

“That’s—where do you keep finding those bullshit quotes?”

“Bullshitquotes.biz, of course,” the cowboy replies dryly. 

“It’s an app, isn’t it?” The Neanderthal leans forward. “You downloaded a fucking app that gives you a stupid, mistranslated quote a day. You probably even _paid_ for it.”

The cowboy points his revolver at the Neanderthal’s face, thrusting a bit for emphasis. “I really don’t get your antipathy for quotes, man.”

“Antipathy? Wow. Public school did you good.”

“Or your unwarranted anti-intellectualism, for that matter.”

“Anti—! Look. Taking a single sentence, out of context, is pointless. You can quote anyone, saying anything, and the _substance_ of the words becomes irrelevant! The new context is all that’s left. You can twist most of Hitler’s speeches around into pacifism and love of Judaism.”

“ _The devil can quote scripture for his purpose,_ ” intones the cowboy.

The Neanderthal sighs, running his hands through his shaggy mane. “You’re a travesty.” 

The other man grins cheekily. “Merchant of Venice.” 

Before the bespectacled Neanderthal can exact his pound of flesh, the great sliding barn doors open, revealing the setting sun. Silhouetted beautifully, in stride the Ramseys and Gavin.

The Neanderthal hops off of his stool. “About fucking time!” he shouts.

Griffon raises an eyebrow. “Good to see you too, Matt.”

The cowboy tips his hat. “Ma’am.” 

“And you too, Jeremy.”

“That’s enough ass-kissing, you cocksuckers.” Geoff perches his sunglasses on the crest of his forehead. “Is everything ready?”

Without a word, Gavin is immediately stalking amongst the cameras and lights and booms, alive in his element. “Well, bugger me backwards. It’s all here. You berks did something halfway right for once.”

“A resounding vote of confidence from Mr. Gavin Free!”

Griffon walks forward to inspect the man tied to the pole. 

“Pear tree?” she asks, ignoring the man struggling and trying to scream at her through the gag.

“Pear tree,” Jeremy says with a nod.

Griffon walks a few times around the wooden pole (and the man that happens to be tied to it), her face stony and impassive. Then, she beams. “This’ll do just fine.” 

“Aaaaand a vote of confidence from the lovely Griffon Ramsey! I think our B-team has made the grade, ladies and gentlemen!” 

Gavin begins moving his equipment into place. Griffon disappears somewhere deeper into the house. Matt and Jeremy stand back a bit as Geoff approaches the bound man.

Geoff just looks at him for a moment, then rips the cloth gag out of his mouth. The man gasps, sputters, retches a bit.

“Hope my employees took care of you,” he says mildly.

“Fuck… you,” the man gasps hoarsely. But there’s fear in his eyes. Like a boy finally seeing what lived in his basement.

“Yeah, okay.” Geoff turns to his B-team. “Where are the rest of them?”

Matt and Jeremy glance at each other. 

“In the freezer,” Matt finally says.

Geoff sighs, scratching at his beard. “Five guys, and you only bring back one alive?”

“Look, they were all oily, and they put up a fight, and—”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Geoff turns back to the polebound man. “Well, looks like you’re going to have to walk this plank alone, sailor.” 

“I’m not… I’m not telling… you _anything_ —”

“Well, of course you aren’t! You have nothing worthwhile to tell us. Some Cosa Nostra foreskins come over to our side of the continent, and try to get in on the massage parlor soapgame? Huntington Beach, Pasadena, Flintridge—you thought we wouldn’t notice? Dumb motherfuckers.” Geoff pats the man on the head. “That’s okay. Your failures will serve as a valuable lesson to others.”

Bright lights snap on, and Gavin emerges behind them, giving a thumbs-up before taking his place behind the cameras.

Griffon returns, wearing heavy cutting chaps and a gas mask.

Geoff, smiling, kisses his wife on the cheek before scooting out of the splash zone with the rest of the men.

Griffon rips the cord on the chainsaw, and the man begins to scream.


	3. Westwinder

_Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter._  
Ernest Hemingway

 _When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity._  
George Bernard Shaw 

_Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god._  
Jean Rostand 

\--- --- ---

Geoff looked into his eyes.

Looked into his eyes, and saw the desire to make all things and unmake all things. 

_The horror,_ Geoff mused. _The horror._

\--- --- ---

When you grow up in rural Alabama, you gain an understanding of hunting.

Not trophy hunting. Not taxidermy fetishism. Not millionaires buying six-figure gem-encrusted double guns and having grim-faced poachers shoot endangered animals in an attempt to assuage the reality of a tiny, unsatisfying, uncompensatable penis. 

When you grow up in rural Alabama, you understand hunting as a means to survive, sometimes, when your parents are too proud or stubborn to collect the government check ever since your dad was laid off from the steel mill or the factory, ‘cause robots are taking over everything. And you lie to your friends as you lock up your bolt-action and say you hunt just for fun, because deep down you’re a little ashamed too.

And putting a bullet in a rabbit, eventually, becomes something you don’t feel too sorry about. 

Geoff understands. That wasn’t him, or anything. He knew a kid like that. Good kid. Don’t know what ever happened to him. But the point is, he gets the general idea. Alright?

Alright.

\--- --- ---

 

Geoff doesn’t care much about serial killers.

He read in an article once that ‘fear of serial killers’ ranked somewhere between sharks and spiders—so, relatively high. Even after 9/11 and ‘turbaned, swarthy Arab’ climbed the list from relative obscurity. 

And who should care? Really. You can get killed anywhere. At a bar. A gas station. At a stoplight. Under a culvert. Geoff can attest to that, as he’s killed people at the four aforementioned locations. And it really wasn’t anything worth making a TV series over. Or writing a book about how we would’ve done it but he really didn’t, _really._ Probably wouldn’t have teenage girls cheering him on at the trial, either.

But it was at—of all places—an overpriced bar on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica where Geoff made an exception.

Burnie frowned at him, leaning an elbow on the brushed-chrome-and-glass counter. “Are you even listening? I said one of the witnesses recanted his statement and the plea deal _didn’t go through._ ” Poor bastard. Burns gets worked to the marrow at RAND, and when he does have a spare moment, his friends are too busy gaping at bar TV. The worst kind of TV!

“Oh, every word,” Geoff intoned, squinting at the widescreen above the artsy array of luxury-brand liquor bottles. Goddamn tourists making so much noise he couldn’t hear the wide-eyed reporter. It's noon and sunny you Midwest refugees, go be annoying at the beach or something. Not even happy hour, holy fuck shut up.

Geoff read the news ticker at the bottom of the screen, eyes flicking back and forth.

Breaking news (what else?). Newark, New Jersey. Another body found, making a total of twenty four killed in a recent spree. Local schools closed, and police have already locked down a North Ward neighborhood and are searching door-to-door (without warrants?). SWAT has rolled out their military hand-me-down mine-resistant armored vehicles. Cordon tape like yellow spiderwebs. It looks like martial fucking law out there. 

The victims? All middle aged, all male. Methodology?

Carefully severing the body into five pieces—torso, arms, legs—and hanging them from trees in popular parks. 

Each body was without its head.

No letters. No signature. Just human remains strung up like recycled, compostable windchimes. A real method artist, that one. 

Upon Geoff’s lower chest, inscribed upon his left row of ribs is the tattoo of a verdant tree, its mossy branches wide and bountiful, its roots deep and dark. The tree of life, perhaps, if you’re feeling poetic.

It was his imagination, of course. But seeing the blurred-out crime scenes, those trees sagging under that literal dead weight—his tree’s boughs began to grow heavy, too.

Taking a sip of his adequately foamy IPA, Burnie snaps his fingers in front of Geoff’s face. Geoff blinks.

“Don’t even think about it,” Burnie says lowly, leaning in. “Gus and I have too much shit to deal with as it is.”

Too late. Geoff had thought about it.

 

\---

It’s almost three thousand miles from Los Angeles to Newark. 

With an airliner, it takes a day. A car? A week.

Of course Geoff takes the fucking car. 

Jack doesn’t appreciate him taking the twincharged Mustang, but Geoff promises to bring him back something interesting. 

He has to postpone his Jackie Chan marathon, too. Gus was devastated, even though he didn’t show it and pretended to wonder why Geoff would even want to watch that plebeian shit.

Geoff hates roadtripping solo. He hates sitting down for hours at a time, he hates traffic, and most of all he hates being away from Griffon ‘cause the growing distance hurts like a widening wound. But this is important. This is business. 

He doesn’t listen to the radio. He thinks. For seven days and nights, Geoff thinks. When he settles his Mustang in a dark alley for the night and cuddles up with his German nine millimeter, he thinks.

\---

Twenty four bodies. Twenty four. All cut into fifths. Heads gone.

Think.

\---

The dates. The times. The rates of decomposition. There’s a pattern. Goddamn it Geoff, it’s right there. Under your nose! But where?

Think.

\---

Geoff pores over the crime scene photos—Lindsay sent them to his phone. How she got them, Geoff doesn’t care to know. Lindsay probably knows who shot JFK with that Asimovian Linux rig of hers. 

Each severed limb is suspended an exact distance from the ground… and are spaced from one another deliberately. Each cut is perfect, precise, all straight lines and flat planes. Image after image… it’s not random. 

Think.

\---

When he’s driving through Georgia, even with the air conditioning, Geoff realizes he’s sweating. No—part of him is sweating. Upon his upper left arm is the rendition of a crashing ocean wave, a precursor of a flood that ends eras, a tidal event that could be produced only by the departure of the moon from Earth’s orbit. Bluest of blues. 

His sea-inked skin is sweating. Cold to the touch. Reeks of brine. 

Geoff stares at his arm for a moment, shakes his head, and keeps driving. He punches up the air conditioning to critical mass. 

Stop thinking.

\--- --- ---

Fairmount Cemetery. Of course. Who, if so preoccupied with life, would not be equally preoccupied with death?

A grey fog creeps along the ground, swirling around his shoes. The grass is wet.

Geoff walks slowly amongst the graves, his fingertips ghosting along the grey stones. Feels the texture of the granite. Grounds himself. The outside world—streetlights, lit windows, cars on highways, helicopters overhead, even crickets—seems so muted, so distant. Utterly unreal. So shrouded in fog, this place could be anywhere else in the world. Or any other world, real. 

He stops, just before a looming mausoleum.

A man sits cross-legged upon the white steps, leaning forward, rock-rigid. A unnatural thing, sprouting from a crack in the stone. A gargoyle sculpted from cold shadow. 

“I’ve sat here every night for a fucking year.”

A lesser man would have flinched. In the dreamy haze of the cemetery, the words are too loud, too real. Sound like the first words that were ever spoken. The first words for the first ears. 

“Well, sorry I kept you waiting,” Geoff drawls coolly. The first response, then, to the first words. “Traffic was a real bitch. I did sneak the carpool lanes, at least.” 

They look at each other—or, at least, Geoff is _pretty_ sure the man is looking at him. Geoff stands maybe ten feet away, illuminated in moonlight, his arms bare to display his tattoos like living armor. Even here, here in the domain of death, here where life is both guest and stranger, here where all is grey and white, the vibrancy of that inked skin is steadfast. The man’s eyes reflect nothing. The man himself reflects nothing. When Geoff speaks, it seems like his voice simply reverberates from the gravestones, from the mausoleum, fades into irrelevance like any other prayer. 

“Well?” the man’s impatience gives shape to the air. Makes it a hard, tangible thing, aimed forward. 

Geoff cocks his head to the side. “Well… what?”

“You found me. Good for you. What are you going to do? Turn me in? Ask me who I am? Ask me why?” His voice rises, oppressive, seeming to push in from everywhere. “Or ask to join me?”

Geoff twitches his mustache for a moment, glancing up at the moon. “None of the above.”

The man shifts, like a shadow growing in size. Something lies across his lap—a machete. In the moonlight, it... it almost seems to... no, that's impossible.

“I saw your methods.” Geoff crouches down, knees creaking from the drive, running a hand along the dewy grass. Rubs his fingers together. “I won’t lie: I didn’t give a shit, at first. But then I looked—I mean, really looked.” His brow furrowed. “Hunting hitmen.”

The man is silent.

“Not for justice or revenge, or any petty PG-13 Hollywood bullshit like that. But… for the sport, for the thrill, for the hunt. You… you sought out the best—no, you were _drawn_ to the best, like a cat to rats. You lifted your nose and smelled mafia. And each of them let you down. All twenty-four.” Geoff looks up into those black eyes, looking for purchase. “And that’s terrible.” 

The man is silent.

Geoff is quiet too, for a moment, but his face soon splits into a smile. “How do you think I found you?”

“You didn’t bring a gun,” the man says suddenly.

“No need.”

“What do you _want?_ ” the man’s voice is a whisper, but it drives all other sound from the cemetery. 

“I want you to join _me._ ” 

A snort. “Get the fuck outta here.”

“I’m serious.” 

“Prove it.”

Done. 

\---

New Orleans. Baton Rouge. St. Louis. Birmingham. 

If one were to look at the record of homicides, one would notice a rash of edged-weapon killings, all within a few days. Gang related, the police surmised, perhaps with drug involvement. 

But Lindsay watched the reports flick across her screen, and knew that Geoff was coming back. 

\---

The man gets into the passenger seat. He’s wiping the blood from his machete with smooth strokes. “Drive.”

“Buckle up.”

He shoots a dark look at Geoff. 

Geoff simply grins.

He buckles his seatbelt, scowling.

“Oh,” Geoff says, almost looking embarrassed as he runs a red light. “It’s been a whole day, we’ve hacked apart three people, and I haven’t even asked your name.” He chuckles. “So much for the etiquette of murder.”

“Does it matter?”

“Well, what will I call you, then? _Mister Machete?”_

“Like fuck you will.”

“Then give me a name.”

The man sighs.

“Michael Jones.”

Geoff nods. The roots of his tree curl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this one is incredibly unpolished. But it's just been sitting there, so I put it up.
> 
> There you go.


	4. Western Promises

She creeps through the back entrance. 

Heels. Hair extensions. Temporary-ink tattoo. Colored contacts. Fake nails. Fake eyelashes. Layers and layers of glittery makeup.

And so it went. That flat-footed, bespectacled, freckle-faced girl with the downcast eyes became a high priestess of the delayed orgasm. Metamorphosis. Winter into spring.

Play the role and let it roll. That was it. She wasn’t her—not _‘her’_ her— she became Nikki. Was Nikki. And Nikki loved the attention. She loved the lusting, lingering gazes of the men straining against the stage. All sly winks and coquettish smiles, popped hips and licked lips. From where she twirled and swayed, they all looked like squirming salmon struggling to get upstream but stuck at the edge of a dam, beating uselessly against concrete. Pathetic, really.

Something cold would run through her guts when she thought she recognized someone in the crowd. But it would never show on her face.

Disgust would writhe in her guts when she saw a girl grinding against a man thrice her age—but it would never show on her face. Nikki’s love of hedonism was an ageless thing. All could come and pray at the church of the lap dance, and as long as they dumped their 401k into the collection basket and kept the pews clean, well, no complaints. 

When she was walking to class and saw a woman with her heels too high or skirt too short, she would scoff, of course. It would be hours later that she would be frowning, wondering why.

Look, at least she wasn’t a sugar baby, alright? She had standards. Principles. Dignity. That’s what she told herself, anyway, so it may as well be true.

\--- --- ---

It’s midnight. The first hour of the new day belongs to her and only her. 

Midnight, and the VIP. She is number one, the shining prize just beyond the tip of everyone’s cock. 

\--- --- ---

… Ones. Ones folded into paper airplanes. George fucking Washington stares up at her, somehow accusing and embarrassed all at once. 

\--- --- ---

He shows up every night. The stroke of midnight. Without fail. 

He’s easy to see. Most clients show up in ties, suits, or have collar s at the very least. This guy moseys on in with a hooded sweatshirt and a beanie, shoulders slouched, hands in pockets. How he makes it past security looking like that, Nikki’s not so sure. Aside from an honest presentation, nothing about him really stands out. He could be like any of the other addicts in here. But when you squint, tilt your head… something about him… something is different. 

“Nikki!” he shouts, jumping up and down, his voice loud even over the music. “I love yoooou!”

She can’t help herself. She’s only human. She snorts, laughs, loses place in her routine. The crowd laughs and whistles too. Absurd. 

\--- --- ---

After her routine, she spots him weaving through the crowd to the bar. This time, she cuts through the dressing room to take a seat next to him. Nikki nods to the bartender. She sets one of his green-paper airplanes on the glowing bar counter.

“Origami, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s an anagram for ‘orgasm.’ I hoped you’d decode my secret message.”

She spits a tiny bit of her Moscow mule back into her glass. Delicately. No one noticed, of course. “That’s… that’s definitely original.”

“I thought you could use some novelty.”

“Original… and wrong, but I’ll give you an A for effort.”

“Thanks, teach. Do I get to see you after class?”

“… A minus.”

“Ouch. Good thing Mom packed me some band-aids.” 

\--- --- ---

“But seriously, asshole bleaching? I mean, holy shit, that sounds like some kind of genre of 80’s snuff film!”

She laughs. Maybe because he’s ridiculous, and maybe because some of her fellow dancers have indeed dyed their anuses to an unattractive chalky beige. 

\--- --- ---

Black suede and brushed chrome and glass and mirrors. 

After three drinks, it looks a little like hell.

After five, it looks a lot like home.

\--- --- ---

In the fog machines, they mixed in human pheromones. Nikki doesn’t remember how she found out. She’d like to forget.

\--- --- ---

“No boyfriends, remember?”

She—well, Nikki—glances up. “What?”

Rebecca joins her at the makeup counter, applying more mascara. “You sit with the same boy every time. Charlie doesn’t say anything since he’s a good guy, but if the boss hears about it he’ll chew your ass out.”

“He couldn’t chew through a paraplegic’s ass.”

A pause. Rebecca blinks.

“O… kay. Anyway, just don’t be stupid, you get me?”

\--- --- ---

She offers him a lap dance. It’s more out of habit than anything, really. Once the words have left her lips, it feels… awkward. Awkward even with a mule pacing in her stomach. The awkwardness wobbles in the air between them, and they both look at it, rather than look at each other.

But he deflects it with a dumb joke and everything goes back to normal. That’s what he does.

Because his eyes are always on her eyes, her face, benign yet cannibalizingly intense. Those eyes never wander south, except maybe to make fun of her pasties or her ridiculous outfit of the night.

“I mean, you have it made. The American dream. You can sell your G-strings on eBay and someone will buy it for flavored dental floss.” He gestures, arm extended, to the stage. “You’re like the mother these guys never had.”

She smiles, but this time, it’s slower to show. 

\--- --- ---

It’s a club, and she plays a role.

But when a different guy approaches her, she can see her usual fanboy in the beanie… shift. It’s the best word she can come up with. His eyes narrow, he lifts his chin, his mouth curves into an easy smirk. He watches every move. She swears she can see his pupils dilate.

And it makes her fucking skin crawl.

\--- --- ---

Nikki is told to work the VIP.

And anything—literally anything, in the dictionary definition—goes. They pay, so whatever they want, they get. And Nikki sure as hell is no accountant, but she’s pretty sure this club makes over half its profits on these VIP types. And they tip enough to rent an apartment for a fucking year, so really, why complain? 

Maybe when they tell the girls to start fucking each other. Or them. On demand.

Or when a suitcase sits ominously in the corner of the room, full of ropes or chains or gags or cuffs but is conspicuously empty of safe words.

… And when they shrug out of their jackets and have hot holsters right there. That’s the big one. 

She begins thinking of the best way to file a complaint.

\--- --- ---

Between the schizophrenic play of liquid black and throbbing red, it’s hard to tell.

Between the epileptic strobe of shadow and light, it’s hard to tell.

Three piercing cracks, in perfect time to the music. Bang, bang, bang. 

(Or was it four? Or five? Or six? Or seven? It happened so fast.)

And three VIPs, slumping down in their chairs. Dead, dead, dead.

(Their eyes are open. Their eyes are open. They’re still hard.)

Nikki can only stand there, petrified, as she feels something warm and sticky spattered across her front, and it isn’t her sweat. Sticky… with sharp, hard fragments.

She swallows. Her mouth is dry. Something bitter wafts in the air, eating into the cigar smoke. Slowly, she turns. Slowly, she raises her eyes to the door: and there she sees a hooded man smoothly holster a smoking pistol.

He smiles at her, puts a finger to his lips, and disappears into the darkness. 

\--- --- ---

“Done?”

Ray puffs on his celebratory joint. In the darkness of the sewer, the flare of flame and his phone's dim screen are the only light. His eyes will soon adjust.

“Done like the sun.” 

“Witnesses?” 

He pops the magazine out of his CZ, bouncing it in his palm. “Nope.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Unpolished. Incomplete. But take it as it is._
> 
>  
> 
> _Good, bad, whichever-- let me know._


	5. West End

The story changes every time he tells it, but Geoff thinks he has it figured out. 

\---

So, the story goes something like this:

Ray is born. Unremarkable in of itself, considering that's how the current seven billion humans on planet Earth arrived--but, more interestingly, he was born deaf and blind. A Puerto Rican version of Helen Keller. Less marketable, but that's life. 

Doctors can't figure it out. It's not the retinae, it's not the optic nerves--it's something in the brain, his brain, hidden deep inside. He's perfectly healthy, otherwise. 

Ms. Narvaez is devastated. What young and hopeful mother would not be? Here, madam, take your newborn--who cannot see your smiling face, or hear your loving voice. 

But his tiny brown hand held tight to her fingers. 

So this young Ray lived in darkness and silence. But, somehow--he learned to roll onto his stomach and crawl and walk with ease. Even as his blank eyes flicked back and forth, he could waddle his way around the house without issue. Stairs, power outlets, sharp corners of coffee tables--the usual downfalls of infant humankind were of no match. He never lost track of his toys, not once. Wherever in the house she may have been, he could always find his mother, arms stretched upward for attention.

And then, one day--a few days after his third birthday--it all bloomed at once.

Sight. Hearing.

The first thing he saw was a beige wall. The first thing he heard was the whir of air conditioning.

And Ray wept. His mother wept, too, holding him tightly, happiest she had ever been in her life.

But Ray, young as he may have been, was sad. For now he saw and heard the world for what it was.

\---

Geoff didn't believe much of it, at first. Geoff doesn't believe much of anything, after all.

But when a man, with no more than a .338 Lapua and scope, can knock a commercial quadrotor drone out of the air at two miles--a drone zipping back and forth--what do you call that? Talent?

A normal person with a normal life would call it talent. Genius, maybe. Savantism. Luck.

But Geoff knew better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Short, yes. But it came to me, so I listened._


	6. Domesticated West

_We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods._  
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

\---

The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.

Marco leans his head back, looks at the geometric patterns on the ceiling. Looks up into that great kaleidoscope.

And he waits. For he knows--in due time--the right words will come to him.

He's like any other Catholic who shed the vagaries of faith with puberty. Now, he feels his soul resonate not with the indulgence and convenience of monotheism, but with the gods of war. Of human cost.

Molokh. Tanit. Mot. Anat. He had heard them, their lilting calls rolling over the dunes and the burnt-out husks of abandoned cars and the ruins of droned villages. Their lilting calls rising out of the discord of gunfire and IEDs and revving engines and screamed commands in broken Arabic. 

The poets had a term for this. He was a man apart. No--a man separated. Divided by sea, by water and salt and wind. Part of him was still there, in that desert, feet in the sand, dust in his mouth, sun on his head, fire in his loins, soul in his heart. And yet part of him was here, back in the place everyone called 'home' despite his suspicions otherwise.

Doctor Haywood does not judge. He listens, and on rare occasion, speaks. But foremost, he listens.

Listens to Marco talk about everything. Life, death, blood and flesh and skin and bone. Honor, glory, valor, shame. Love. Sex. Divorce. Fear. 

Marco tells him everything. Doctor Haywood is one of those people--those few, precious people to whom all people feel a sudden bond, a sudden and unmistakable and deeply human intimacy. In a way, Marco is not telling Doctor Haywood anything, really--for he, somehow, already knows. That makes it easier. Marco is saying it out loud, to himself, really. To make sense of it. To see if it can make sense.

Doctor Haywood's expression did not change when Marco talked about killing people. Or about his dreams. His pupils would dilate or contract, no more. His breathing would not change. Unlike in the movies, he never took notes. He merely laced his hands, and listened.

In that way people are in the presence of true greatness, Marco is almost bashful, humble, aspiring to one day be as wise as this man sitting across from him. But in that way of his, Doctor Haywood reassures Marco that yes, he is wise, albeit in his own way. By index of his own experiences, own thoughts, own revelations. It moves Marco to a shy modesty.

“I’ll do it. Tonight.”

Doctor Haywood looks on, perfectly still.

“I haven’t touched her for months. I—Jesus Christ, I haven’t touched myself in months. Not like I meant it. That’s not right. That’s not—well, that’s not me.” 

Doctor Haywood looks on.

“Tonight. Fuck everything else. I’m taking her out to dinner. Wine. Roses.” His fingers tighten upon the armrests of his chair. “Rose petals on the bed. Candles. Music. My good boxers.”

Doctor Haywood looks on.

“Because why would I leave that over there? There are things to leave here, and things to leave there. And that—my love—my marriage—is here, isn’t it?” He pauses. “No, that’s not right. It’s… wherever she is. Wherever we are. Right?”

“That is for you to decide,” Doctor Haywood says coolly.

Marco nods. “Tonight. Yeah…. Tonight.” He glances at the clock—his two hours are up, thank fuck for insurance—so he stands and extends his hand. “Thanks, Doctor. Thanks again.” 

The doctor rises and meets the handshake, his grip solid yet curiously detached. “Of course. I would do no less.”

Marco leaves, shoulders squared and head high and partially erect. 

Ryan watches him go, listens to his receding footfalls.

And he wonders if Geoff is right.

And truly hopes that Geoff is wrong.


End file.
